Why any company would honestly release a set of infra red headphones is puzzling. Infrared is the lowest quality wireless format available and so last decade. The Philips HC200 Rechargeable Infrared headphones are a complete waste of time in our opinion. They are woefully inadequate for listening to any music source and don't work very well at all.

From a design standpoint, they are rather attractive and sit comfortably on the head. However, the sound quality and wireless capabilities are so poor that no matter how good the design or build quality were, it simply cannot compensate for the headphones' dire performance.

The unit comes in two parts, the headphones and the transmitter. The transmitter is rather unattractive, attaches to a sound source via a standard 3.5mm jack connector and is powered via an AC adapter. The headphones are powered by an in-built rechargeable battery which is connected to the transmitter when charging.

The problems immediately become apparent the minute you put the headphones on and power them up. The quality is inconsistent and distant whilst the sound is too quiet, even at full volume. Since the wireless connection is established via infrared, the wearer needs to be sitting directly in front of the transmitter in order to get a clear signal and even then it isn't all that clear. We found that moving the head in any way generally caused the headphones to lose signal or crackle with white noise and moving around caused the signal to fade in and out or get lost completely.

We were terribly disappointed with product and cannot in good faith recommend them to anyone other than department store mannequins or stone statues. These are the only two groups that have the ability to remain still enough to receive a good signal.